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A good while had passed since Jax had lost himself in this place. He had no idea how long; time didn’t keep its usual shape here. It didn’t flow like a river, and it didn’t tick like a clock. Instead, it settled like dust in the corners of rooms, piled up in the gaps around doors, and hung in the air as a thick, almost touchable fog.
Jax was alone, face to face with himself.
The space around him wasn’t empty — it breathed. Out of the silence, out of the darkness itself, rooms began to materialize, one after another, as if fate itself were laying out a path he couldn’t refuse. Each room was a doorway into another layer of his mind, into a corner of his soul he’d forbidden himself to visit for years.
In Jax’s hand, a pink lantern glowed. Its light was odd: not bright, not blinding, but muted, as if it wasn’t so much pushing back the darkness as negotiating with it. In that light, the rooms took shape — heavy, angular, as if sculpted from memories and fears.
He moved with deliberate slowness. He’d already figured it out: there was nowhere to run from this place. All he could do was accept what lay ahead and walk through the rooms with a quiet resolve, meeting himself at every turn. He took his first step, and the door behind him silently dissolved into the darkness.
Jax left the first room behind, and the past stayed there like a heavy coat he’d finally laid aside. In that room, time froze in shouts, in the slam of a door, in his father’s indifferent gaze, in his mother’s words that cut sharper than glass. He didn’t look back; he knew that if he saw those scenes again, they’d dig into him once more, like rusty hooks sinking into flesh.
The second room stretched out as an endless corridor. The silhouettes along the walls had no faces, but their laughter was clear, and it burrowed into his mind like the screech of chalk on a blackboard. Then came something he couldn’t quite call pain — more like erasure. It was as if they were stripping away the very habit of being the person everyone wanted him to be. Jax walked forward without blinking, and his calm wasn’t indifference; it was a shield forged from exhaustion. When the last shred was gone, the silence grew almost tangible, and he felt something inside him begin to knit itself back together, smooth and faintly glowing in the pink light.
The third room unfolded as an infinite staircase that led into darkness with no top and no bottom. From all sides, hands reached out — bodiless, insistent, demanding.
One of them placed a broken mask in his hands, as if forcing him to face his own cracks. He leaned over it, gently pressing the splitting edges together with his fingers, and began to mend it, applying clear glue drop by drop. His movements were unhurried, almost reverent, as if he weren’t fixing an object but trying to hold on to a memory that was falling apart. The seams came out uneven; in places, the glue formed little bumps, but he didn’t stop. Each new layer was an admission that wholeness would have to be rebuilt piece by piece, patiently and without hurry.
Another hand held out a worn-out doll with a slit along its side, as if testing whether he had the patience to restore something that had long lost its original form. He picked up a needle and, stitch by stitch, began to close the tear. The fabric under his fingers felt alive, as if it were sighing or resisting, but he kept going, as if this repetitive motion could smooth over something far bigger than a simple rip in the cloth.
A third hand held out a blank sheet of paper and a quill that carried the cold scent of ink. He didn’t wait for a command; he already knew what was expected of him: not just words, but a full confession. He started writing, slowly, so slowly that each letter felt branded onto his skin. He laid out every mistake, hiding none of his motives, softening none of the wording. He recalled where his hand had trembled, where he’d stayed silent, where he’d lied to himself and to others. The lines stacked up, heavy and unsparing, and with each one, he seemed to grow more transparent, as if the act of writing were drawing out everything he’d held inside for so long.
He did all of this without arguing, without asking questions. He sewed, glued, and formed letters with a trembling hand while the staircase kept leading him upward. Time moved differently here: one step equaled a day, a turn on the stairs a week. And when he finally realized he’d walked more than a year, it didn’t surprise him. He just kept going, because stopping would mean falling apart.
When the final step dissolved beneath his feet, the rhythm of the space itself shifted. The fourth room felt like a dream woven from stars. A corridor dusted with starlight stretched ahead, every speck a tiny spark, and mirrors were set into the walls like windows into other worlds. Familiar things flickered inside them, yet they slipped away, like reflections in a dream. Then, suddenly, a voice broke through the silence — soft and warm, almost wrapping around him.
“Jax…”
He froze. He knew that voice better than his own breath. It was Pomni — the one who had smiled at him, the one who’d stayed by his side even when he’d pushed her away again and again. The thought of her warmed him even here, in this icy emptiness, and he moved toward the sound without thinking, without doubting, as if her voice alone were the anchor keeping him from dissolving completely. Soon, the quiet tinkling of piano keys joined the voice — a piano he knew down to the goosebumps it gave him. Then the singing began: “Daisy Bell.”
Jax walked toward the source of the sound. A girl stood before him, though he couldn’t see her face — only her hand in a red glove, stretched out toward him. He stepped closer, and Pomni’s voice grew louder, more confident, and suddenly he realized he was singing along with her, blending into a duet where words weren’t needed. In that song was everything: forgiveness, acceptance, a return to himself. He reached out and touched her glove, and she led him to a mirror.
The reflection wasn’t the Jax he knew. Not just a shadow. Not a tangle of wounds and masks. Instead, there stood a rabbit‑girl with long dark hair; in her eyes, there was no fear, no guilt — just a quiet joy, as if, after all this time, she’d finally found her way home. She smiled and held out her hands, and in that smile, there was no reproach, only warmth.
Jax touched the glass, and his fingers passed through it like water. The next moment, he was lying in cool water, looking up. Instead of the sky, a circus spread above him — a dark tent studded with stars — and beside him sat Pomni, her eyes wide with wonder, tears clinging to her lashes. In that instant, nothing else existed for him except her gaze. He felt all his inner walls crumble, giving way to a simple, deep feeling: he wasn’t alone.
He jerked upright, water streaming off him like the remnants of a dream. Ahead, a bright light flickered, beckoning, promising something new. He lunged toward it without looking back, as if the light itself was the answer to every question he’d never gotten around to asking.
Fog enveloped him, blurring the outlines. For a breathless moment, he felt himself unraveling — not into nothing, but into threads of light and memory, each one tugging at a different piece of who he’d been. The threads loosened, drifted, and then wove themselves into a new pattern.
When the fog thinned, he was no longer there. Instead, a tall rabbit‑girl opened her eyes in an unfamiliar tent. Everything around her was strange; her mind was blank, with no memories lingering. Beside her sat Pomni, her huge eyes brimming with tears and amazement, as if she’d just witnessed a miracle. Pomni looked at the girl, hesitant to speak, as if afraid to break this fragile moment of awakening. Still, she couldn’t hold back. She gently reached out and barely touched the girl’s shoulder — a light, tremulous gesture that carried both relief and joy at finally being together again.